


The Same, Only Different

by Mireille



Series: Five People Who, in Some Dimension, Dated Xander Harris in High School [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-28
Updated: 2006-04-28
Packaged: 2019-03-13 15:22:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13573383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: It was exactly the same as yesterday, and completely different, and yeah. They were cool.





	The Same, Only Different

**Author's Note:**

> Slight AU, starting a few days before "Welcome to the Hellmouth."

Jesse's parents had stopped asking Xander if his parents minded him being away from home so much a long time ago. His mom made Xander call home if he spent the night, but besides that, nobody even commented on it any more; if Xander was around at dinnertime, there were five plates on the table instead of four, and if Jesse's dad wanted to take the kids out to Dairy Queen afterward, it was understood that Xander was to just get in the backseat, fighting with Jesse's kid sister for the driver's side window, and not say anything about seeing Jesse later or even paying for his own ice cream. 

Jesse's mom had started nagging him, too, a couple of years ago: telling him to get a haircut, and including him in the lecture about not spending all day rotting their brains with videogames, and glaring at him almost as much as Jesse when she found out they'd ignored the carrot sticks and oranges and tuna salad she'd left them for lunch and gone out to get fast food instead. 

Today was going to be a day when they got glared at, because there was a bag from Doublemeat Palace on the floor between them, and Jesse was wiping grease on his pants leg before picking up his game controller. At least he didn't do that, Xander thought, but it was mostly because he did his own laundry if he wanted it to get done, and he wasn't a huge fan of stain removal. 

Xander fished a burger out of the bag, watching Jesse's progress on the screen while he ate. The food at Doublemeat was always messy--that was one of the best things about it--and Xander licked a dribble of ketchup-and-mayo from his wrist; it was easier than trying to find a napkin that hadn't already soaked up the grease from the fries. 

When he looked up, Jesse was looking over at him, and for half a second, Xander thought Jesse was going to start lecturing him about table manners. He was giving Xander a weird look, anyway, one that made Xander feel suddenly twitchy. "What?"

"What, what?" Jesse said. There were a few seconds when Jesse blinked too rapidly, and then things seemed to shift back to normal. 

"You were staring."

Jesse rolled his eyes. "Whatever." He turned his attention back to the game, and Xander went back to his lunch. 

The next time it happened, Xander had just finished his turn at the game, setting down the controller and reaching for his plastic cup of Coke. Jesse was looking at him again, brow slightly furrowed like he was trying to think of something. 

"You're doing it again," Xander said. 

"What?" Jesse leaned back, turning to look at something on his bookshelf instead of looking at Xander. 

"Look me in the eye and tell me you don't know what."

"Look me in the eye and tell me you don't know what," Jesse mimicked. "Jesus, Lavelle, you can be such an idiot."

"Shut up, Eugene," Xander said. Jesse hated his middle name almost as much as Xander did--which was lame, because "Eugene" might be a stupid name, but nothing was worse than "Lavelle."

"Make me." When Xander didn't do anything, Jesse grinned. "Unless you're too much of a pussy." 

Xander punched him in the arm then, and they wound up scuffling around on the floor for a while, until one of Jesse's size-twelve sneakers knocked over his cup of soda, and they had to stop to try to get orange soda out of the rug before Jesse's mom came upstairs. By the time the stain was just a faint discoloration on the carpet, they'd forgotten what had started the wrestling match in the first place. 

But later that night, when Xander had decided that he was definitely spending the night (because there was no school tomorrow, and Jesse had figured out the password for the parental block on the TV, and that meant they could get to the scrambled-porn channels again once everyone else was asleep), he looked up from the comic book he was reading to find that Jesse was doing it again. 

He looked like Willow, Xander thought, all of a sudden, and that didn't make any sense at all. Jesse was tall and dark-haired and a guy, and Willow was a tiny little red-haired girl, and they didn't look anything alike except in the sense that they were human. Well, Willow was. He wasn't sure about Jesse, some of the time. But something about Jesse's face made Xander think of Willow, and he had a weird feeling that if he could just figure out why, he'd have figured out something huge and important. 

"What is your problem?" probably wasn't the way to find that out, but it seemed like the only thing he could say. 

Jesse was doing that blinking-too-much thing again, and there was a red stain spreading slowly over his ears and neck, and then the world pretty much turned itself inside out and backwards, because Jesse leaned over and kissed him. 

The next thing Xander was actually aware of was his ass hitting the floor, because he'd scrambled backward, away from Jesse and over the edge of the bed, because that was so not cool. That was... it was... there was a knot in Xander's stomach, and he wanted to just punch Jesse in the face, because if it was Jesse, and Xander had figured out something Jesse didn't want anybody in the world to know, ever, _Xander_ wouldn't be this much of a dick about it. 

Xander was on his feet and out the door before Jesse could say anything, and so what if he'd left the Safeway bag with his clothes for tomorrow hanging on the back of Jesse's door? He didn't like that shirt much anyway, and one of the socks had a hole in it, and he just needed to get away from Jesse and his _asshole_ way of telling Xander he knew--and how the hell could he know, Xander never told _anybody_ \--that the stash of magazines under Xander's bed had been completely ignored for the past couple of weeks, because they didn't turn him on the way thinking about Jesse did. 

Xander ran all the way back to his house, not stopping until he was in his own back yard, on the other side of the tree where there was no way his parents would see him even if, for some weird reason, they looked out the kitchen window. He didn't want to go in. He wanted to stay out here and wish he had punched Jesse in the face. 

Jesse was his best friend, or at least his best guy friend, and of course Jesse would figure out Xander's secret. Xander sucked at keeping secrets from him. But it wasn't like Xander was ever going to say anything, or do anything, either. The best-friend thing to do would be for Jesse to pretend he had no idea. 

Not kiss him so that he could laugh at Xander for kissing back like it was something real. Not that Xander had kissed back, and not that he'd given Jesse a chance to laugh, and not that Jesse had looked like he was about to make fun of Xander for anything. Jesse had looked... scared. Scared and embarrassed and yeah, okay, maybe there was a reason the way Jesse had been looking at him made him think of Willow, and maybe it was because of the stuff Xander--who _did_ know the best-friend thing to do, and also really didn't want to go there anyway--pretended he hadn't noticed about Willow. 

Okay, so maybe it wasn't Jesse who completely sucked as a human being, let alone as a best friend, and, whoa, Jesse had wanted to kiss him. Jesse _had_ kissed him, and Xander had.... 

Oh, crap. Tonight had been maybe the only time in his life when the person who liked him and the person he liked were actually the same person, and he'd totally screwed up. 

Xander was running again, through the back door and into the living room, and when his dad wanted to know what the hell he was doing home, he yelled something about a bad burrito, figuring that ought to keep him away. His dad wasn't all that big on the idea of being puked on, and if his mom had even been listening, the most she would do would be to tell him to keep his trashcan next to his bed in case he got sick again. 

He closed his door, locked it--okay, it didn't really lock; when he was four he'd locked himself in about five times in one day, and his father had changed the doorknob, but if he jammed his desk chair under the knob, it worked pretty well at keeping his parents out--and grabbed the phone. 

Jesse's house was number two on the speed dial, because Willow had helped him set it up and it only seemed fair to put her first. His mom answered, and Xander winced; he'd flown past Jesse's parents without even giving them the lame food-poisoning explanation. 

"Um, yeah. Can I talk to Jesse?"

"Xander? Are you okay? You ran out of here pretty fast." And she sounded worried about him, which just made Xander feel even guiltier. What was he supposed to day, "Yeah, great, except for missing what might be my only chance to make out with your only son?" He liked Jesse's parents. They were the only non-stupid grownups he knew. He didn't want them to hate him, even if Jesse did. 

He really, _really_ didn't want Jesse to hate him. 

"Uh. Yeah. I think something I ate today made me sick."

"I keep telling you two that junk you eat is bad for you," she said. " Jesse's not feeling so great himself. When I went up to ask him why you were leaving, he'd already gone to bed." 

"Oh." Oh, _crap._ Jesse was his best friend, and Xander had pretty much just shot him down completely. And he hadn't even wanted to, which was the stupid thing. One of many stupid things. 

"You ought to get some rest, too," she said. "And if you're both not better tomorrow, I'm calling the health department about that Doublemeat place. There's no telling what's in the food...." 

"Yeah. Okay. Rest sounds like a good plan," Xander said, hanging up as soon as she said goodbye. 

He went to bed, but he couldn't fall asleep; he stared up at the ceiling miserably, only drifting off when light had already started coming through the window.

***

Nobody was answering the phone at Jesse's house, which really meant _Jesse_ wasn't answering the phone. Jesse's parents were at work, and his sister wasn't supposed to answer the phone when their parents weren't home.

Xander couldn't really blame him; in Jesse's place, he probably wouldn't answer the phone either. He'd probably have left it off the hook, or turned the ringer off, so he wouldn't even know it was ringing. Or maybe Jesse had left it on, just so he could hear how many times Xander called. Xander thought that sounded like something Jesse might do, but then again, Xander had already figured out that sometimes he had _no fucking clue_ what Jesse would do. 

He was pretty sure Jesse was home, though, because there weren't all that many places you could go in Sunnydale, so Xander headed over there. Nobody answered the door, which probably meant that either Jesse's sister wasn't home today, or Jesse had slipped her five bucks to play in her room and pretend she didn't know Xander was out there. 

No big deal. Jesse had locked himself out of the house often enough that Xander knew exactly where his parents hid the spare key--not under the little concrete frog key-hider, but under the cracked flowerpot next to it. Xander unlocked the door and let himself in.

He figured Jesse already knew he was here; there was no point in announcing it again, so Xander just went upstairs. Kimberly's room was empty, which was probably a good thing. He was pretty sure there was going to be yelling, and the last thing he needed while Jesse yelled at him about being a dick yesterday was a ten-year-old girl watching him get yelled at.

Jesse's door was closed, but not locked, and when Xander opened the door, it was to see Jesse sitting cross-legged on his bed. He was looking straight at Xander, like he'd been waiting for him, but there were gaming magazines and the TV remote and Pop-Tart wrappers on the bed, so it was pretty obvious that Jesse hadn't just spent the morning being miserable about Xander. 

Xander was trying really hard to be happy about that. 

"Go home, Xander," Jesse said. 

"Nah. You get better cable channels," Xander said, and then stopped himself. Maybe this wasn't the day to be a smart-ass. Or maybe it was. He had no idea, because there was nowhere in his sixteen years of life that he'd learned how to apologize to his best friend for freaking out when said best friend kissed him. Or how to ask him if they could maybe do that again. A lot. 

He decided to try again. "Look, Jesse--"

Jesse cut him off. "Go home," he repeated. "We're cool, it's fine, I'll see you at school tomorrow."

"What about today?"

"I'm busy."

Xander sat down on the bed, picking up one of the magazines. "Rereading six-month-old magazines? Better get a secretary to keep up with your schedule." 

"I swear to God, Xander, if you don't go home I will punch you in the head." 

Xander shrugged. "I probably deserve it."

Jesse glared at him, but instead of punching Xander, he flopped back onto the bed, grabbing the magazine out of Xander's hands and beginning to very deliberately turn the pages. 

Xander sat there, tracing the patterns on Jesse's bedspread to give himself something to do, and watched the clock on Jesse's nightstand blink: 12:31, 12:32, 12:33.... 

By the time it got to 12:47, Xander thought he was going to explode if he didn't say something soon. "Look, Jesse," he said again, "I know I was an asshole yesterday, and I wanted to explain why I--" 

It would have been a lot easier if Jesse sounded mad at him. If Jesse just got pissed off and told Xander he was just like the knuckle-dragging creeps on the football team, then Xander could just get pissed off right back because Jesse wouldn't listen. 

Jesse didn't sound mad. Jesse just sounded tired, and maybe sad, and Xander couldn't get pissed off. All he could do was feel like a complete loser. 

"Don't explain," Jesse said. "Just--don't. We're cool, okay? You don't have to worry about it. I'm not going to jump you in your sleep, dumbass."

"You don't get it."

"What the fuck is there to get?" Jesse demanded. "I kissed you. You wigged. How stupid would I have to be not to get that?" 

"About as stupid as I was to figure you were just screwing with me?" Okay, wrong word, bad word, bad mental images (bad-good-not-right-now-please mental images, and please God let this conversation go right so that could happen one day) , but Xander barreled right on. "I thought you were just being a dick."

Jesse rolled his eyes, which Xander thought might have been a good sign. "Fuck you. It wasn't that bad."

"One word, Jesse: breath mints. Okay, two words." And Jesse laughed, even if he still had dark circles under his eyes, smudges that looked like bruises, and so Xander just kept talking. "I thought you'd read my mind, stupid, and you were being an asshole about it."

"Did anyone ever tell you you make _no_ sense? I mean, besides me. And Willow. And all of our teachers. And _everyone you ever met_?"

"Why stop there? I'm waiting for some old guy from, like, Kansas or somewhere to call me just to tell me I'm an idiot." He shrugged. "I thought you knew I kind of, you know. Wanted you to do that. And so you were going to do it and laugh and... I don't know. The world was going to end or something." He laughed, a little, because it sounded really stupid out loud. In his head, it still felt pretty real and scary, but out loud, he was an idiot. 

And finally, Jesse sounded pissed off. "Right. Because that's what I'd do to my best friend? Screw you, Xander. Seriously. Get the hell away from me." 

"I said it was stupid!" Xander yelled. 

"Well, you were right!"

Xander sighed. "Fine. The hell with it. You want me to go home? I'll go home." And maybe tomorrow he'd wake up with the Martian Death Flu or something, and he wouldn't have to go to school ever again. 

Jesse glared at him. "You're such a moron." For a minute, it sounded... different. Not like the ten billion times since second grade that Jesse had called him a moron, or a doofus, or a dickhead, but like he actually meant it. 

Xander shrugged and started to get up when Jesse added, "Yeah. You're a moron, Lavelle." Xander looked over at him, and saw Jesse sort-of smiling. 

"Oh, shut up, _Eugene_ ," Xander said, and when Jesse punched him on the arm--okay, maybe a tiny bit harder than normal--he was so relieved he had to laugh. 

"We're cool," Jesse said when Xander finally stopped laughing, and this time Xander believed him. 

And then he figured it was his turn to make a fool of himself, so after a quick glance to make sure he'd closed the door when he came in, he leaned over and kissed Jesse. 

The movies were definitely lying, because if you believed them, when you kissed somebody you really liked for the first time (last night didn't count), there were supposed to be fireworks and bells. At the very least, he was pretty sure there wasn't supposed to be anything in the excessive drool department, or the nearly-getting-your-nose-broken department, and seriously, Jesse was a complete spaz. Or maybe that was him. Or both of them. 

Xander didn't care, because they'd stopped kissing, and there was, for a second, this terrible awkward silence that had Xander's stomach tied in knots, until Jesse handed him a PlayStation controller and said, "Prepare to get your ass kicked."

And then it was like every other no-school Monday since elementary school, except that Jesse was sitting closer to him on the floor than usual, and Xander had his hand on Jesse's leg. 

Exactly the same as yesterday, and completely different, and yeah. They were cool.

***

"I thought she was done being mad at you," Jesse said. Xander looked in the direction he was nodding and saw Willow--or at least, saw long red hair of a definitely Willow-like persuasion--sitting down across the cafeteria from them.

"She's done," Xander said, even if he wasn't a hundred percent sure about that. She hadn't been mad, really, anyway. She'd been confused, at first, which was probably Xander's fault, though he had to say that he'd never promised that he'd make sense when backed into a corner by fiendishly devious questions like, "Want to go to the Bronze tonight?" 

And then she'd given Xander this weird little smile, and said she was happy for them, and promised she wouldn't tell anyone. Which would have been cool, except that Jesse had biology with Aura and Aphrodesia, and he'd said they were laughing about Willow crying in the girls' bathroom. 

So no, Willow hadn't been mad, because that would have made Xander feel like less of a jerk. She'd just cried, and things had been kind of weird, but there had been bad Indian television and popcorn the other night, just the two of them, and stuff had started to seem like it would be okay. 

"She's just sitting with, um, Buffy," Xander said. At least, he was pretty sure that was the new girl's name. She'd only been there a couple of days, and while new scenery was always appreciated, it wasn't exactly as important as it would have been a couple of weeks ago. 

"Who?" Jesse craned his neck to see past a couple of basketball players. "Oh, Hot New Girl."

Xander kicked him in the ankle. "Hot New Girl's name is Buffy, and shut up, anyway." And he wasn't even slightly jealous that Willow had a new friend that he barely knew. Buffy seemed nice--a little weird, but nice--and it was completely okay that Willow was spending a lot of time with her. She liked the library as much as Willow did, for one thing--which was kind of weird, because she didn't look like a girl who spent Friday nights in the library--and Willow having friends who were girls meant Xander didn't have to fear a repeat of the Horrible Hair-Braiding Incident of 1996. 

"Someday, there'll be another Hot New Girl, and then I'll start calling this one Buffy," Jesse said, between bites of his sandwich. 

Xander kicked him again, and then decided to change the subject before Jesse started making cracks about Xander being jealous. Even if he had been, which would be stupid, because Jesse was just being Jesse and Xander knew that better than anybody, pointing it out at school could lead to stuff Xander really wasn't comfortable with just yet. 

"Bronze tonight?" he asked, stealing the cookie off Jesse's lunch tray. 

Without ever changing his tone of voice, Jesse said, "Give it back or die, Lavelle, and no. Mom and Dad are going to Kim's band concert tonight."

"Do you have to go?"

Jesse looked up and grinned at him. "Nope."

So it'd be just like dozens of other times when Xander came over to eat pizza and watch TV and pretend they were kind of doing their homework. Only this time... yeah. No parents for _hours_. Grade school band concerts went on _forever_. Xander was pretty sure they wouldn't be getting a lot of homework done. 

Not that they ever had before, so really, it was just the same, only different.

**Author's Note:**

> [me on tumblr](https://mireille719.tumblr.com)


End file.
